


Growth

by yukitsukihana



Series: youkai!verse [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1308688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yukitsukihana/pseuds/yukitsukihana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half-tengu aren't always born with wings. Sometimes they grow in later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growth

It had started out as a minor itch. Just an occasional prickle of the skin over his shoulder blades, gone with a single scratch.

But it kept coming back.

He didn’t realize it at first, absently scratching whenever it cropped up, paying attention to other things. It was Aoko who noticed first, especially with her sitting directly behind him. She asked him about it, and he’d been honestly confused. Hadn’t realized how often he’d been scratching, how much of a problem it had been.

He thought it’d go away.

But now that he was thinking about it, he was noticing how bad it was getting. He kept wanting to dig his fingers into his skin and scratch until the itch was gone.

By the end of the week he had managed to gouge lines in his skin with his fingernails. And now it hurt.

Not just because of his bleeding skin, no, but something felt wrong, like his skin was stretched too tight, threatening to rip itself apart. He couldn’t put a bandage over it, and even his clothes rubbing across his back as he moved made him wince.

He spent the next few days curled up in bed, shirtless, whimpering as the pain seemed to get worse and worse.

And then the fever hit.

 

* * *

 

Chikage was worried for her son. She, too, had watched him scratch at his back, to squirm in his seat and rub against the back of it. Wondering if he’d picked up a rash, she’d taken a look, but there was nothing. She’d put some lotion on, hoping it’d help.

He kept scratching, though, and she’d swat his hands away from his back when she could. It wasn’t for a full week that she saw how much damage he’d done to himself. Curled up in pain on his bed, unable to get dressed to even go to school, crisscrossing lines of dried blood on his shoulders…

And small quills poking through the surface of his skin along his spine.

She couldn’t take him to a normal doctor, not like this. Her husband had told her there was the possibility of Kaito’s wings growing in later, but she’d never expected it’d be like _this_.

And as she brought him his dinner one day, she’d seen him asleep, sweating, skin clammy and pale. She brushed a hand over his hair and jerked it back almost instantly. His temperature was so _high_! It always scared him, when Kaito came down with a fever. His normal body temperature was already so high; fever-high, if he were a normal person. Toichi’s had been high, too. It was normal for tengu, apparently. But what was high for a tengu was deadly for a human, and it always frightened her when his temperature rose above 40 °C.

His back looked worse, too, like something was…Oh, God. Like something was underneath straining to rip out. And it probably was. Thick fully-formed human skin blocking sudden bone growth of appendages he should have been born with.

This was…She didn’t know what to do. She wished Toichi were still here; _he’d_ know. Oh, but there was Yuusaku…

Hoping the time difference, wherever he was, wasn’t too great, she called him. Her son’s wings were growing in, he was in pain, and she just didn’t know what to _do_ …

The response she received shocked her so much she nearly dropped the phone. Ask again for confirmation. Thank him and hang up.

Oh, mon dieu.

She retrieved all the items she’d need for this. Towels, a large bowl of warm water…And a scalpel.

If left on their own, the wings would grow oddly until they ripped the skin on his back, resulting in scars and possible deformation. But to take a knife to her own son…

She shook her head. She was Phantom Lady; she had been through so much worse than this. Kaito was already unconscious, there was little chance he’d remember anything that would happen. She only hoped it wouldn’t be too painful…

Laying him face-first on the floor of his room, towels beneath him and basin of water within easy reach, she straddled his back, carefully placed a hand on his neck to hold, and cut.

The skin of his shoulder blade opened frighteningly easy under the scalpel, and she tried to ignore her son’s screams of pain. Oh, how it ached, and she’d never wanted to hurt him like this, but this was apparently _necessary_. When she’d cut a good eight centimetres, something _moved_ , and a bloody stump appeared from the base of the cut. The fresh limb moved up, folding back on a joint she couldn’t see, and then the whole thing unfolded, extending even more. It didn’t look like a wing, not really. There were no feathers; it was more like a wing one would see on a plucked chicken in the market, though dripping with dark blood. Kaito whimpered under her, and she focused her resolve, switched the blade to her other hand, and repeated the process.

When both young wings were out, she carefully patted them dry with  towels soaked in the warm water. She noticed, then, that his wings, too, had pin feathers. They also seemed far too small for him - not like Toichi’s size at all - and she wondered if they’d grow larger to fit him, or if they’d remain too small his whole life. His fever had broken, however, and that was a good thing; it meant that she had done everything right. There was blood everywhere, though, and that’d have to get washed, but for now…

For now, her son had wings, and a whole slew of problems would arise from that. How would he hide them? _Could_ he hide them? He’d have to be taken in front of the Kuroba clan head now. If he couldn’t ever hide them, what would happen to his social life?

She sighed. Too much worrying for now. She’d have to tackle those problems when they arose. Kaito was sleeping soundly, now, so she’d let him.

God, she needed a drink.

 

* * *

 

Kaito was surprised to wake up without pain. Well, aside from the muscle soreness caused by fever. He slowly tested out each limb, stretching it as far as it would go.

…He paused. Stretched again. Counted.

How the hell was he stretching _six_ limbs?!

He turned, looked over his shoulder, and spotted two… _things_ , that looked like they were attached to his back. What…the _hell?!_

They rose up out of his back with his mood, and if he concentrated, he found he could move them. But _what the hell was going on?_

"Mom?!"


End file.
